A special merci beaucoup (thank you very much) to Yves Guilleux for supplying GC standings down to 10th place for each stage.

1995 Giro d'Italia Race Profile

1995 Giro Quick Facts:

3,743.9 km raced at an average speed of 38.33 km/hr

198 starters and 122 classified finishers

Neither Marco Pantani nor Miguel Indurain started the 1995 Giro.

Tony Rominger took the lead when he won the stage two time trial and never relinquished it. His form was dominating and never did his opponents put him in difficulty. His major opposition came from Evgeni Berzin and Piotr Ugrumov, both on the Gewiss-Ballan squad. Because they were both ambitious and disliked each other, they spent as much time attacking each other as they did Rominger.

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The starting field of 198 riders had some riders who were pretty good with a bike. Both Tony Rominger—already the Vuelta record holder with three wins (1992, ’93 and ’94) and owner of the World Hour Record—and Evgeni Berzin were in fine form. But Berzin couldn’t expect undivided loyalty from his Gewiss team. Piotr Ugrumov was included in the team roster and the two had developed an intense dislike for each other. Missing was Induráin, who decided not to tire himself before the Tour.

Pantani was looking good, but on May 1, while on a training ride before leaving later that day to ride the Tour of Romandie, he was hit by a car. He had no broken bones, but he was beaten up badly enough that he had to miss the Giro. Pantani recovered in time to contest the Tour de France in July where he came in thirteenth, winning two stages and the Best Young Rider Jersey.

The first Giro stage was sited in Umbria, rolling out of Perugia and finishing in Terni. The pack came to Terni together and Mario Cipollini’s Mercatone Uno team gave him a perfect leadout. He put several bike lengths between himself and second place Mario Manzoni, making the racer nicknamed the “Lion King” the year’s first maglia rosa.

The men riding to own the Pink Jersey in Milan would be not be allowed to hide this year. The second stage was a 19-kilometer time trial from Foligno to Assisi, and being planted on top of a hill, the only way to Assisi was up. This was a stage for an all-rounder who could handle his bike, given the roads were slippery from rain. Rominger destroyed the field with a superb winning ride and took the Giro lead for the first time in his career.

Stage four to Loreto in Le Marche featured four circuits over rolling roads, a route hard enough to keep the teams attentive to potential breaks by Classification contenders. Indeed, each lap’s climb was raced aggressively with attacking riders gaining a few seconds only to be swept up by Rominger’s gregari. On the final time up the hill, Berzin teammate Vladislav Bobrik jumped away. Rominger instantly had the Russian in his sights, swept by him and kept going for another stage win, distancing second-place Fondriest by four seconds.

Rominger wins stage four in Loreto

The race headed south to the toe of the boot. Each day there were at least a few hills to chew away at the riders’ reserves, stage seven being a good example with an uphill sprint after a day of rolling terrain. Rominger tried to repeat his stage four success, but Fondriest was tired of getting second and won the stage. Rominger remained the leader by 47 seconds over Fondriest.
The eighth stage had the potential to be game altering with its 18-kilometer climb to the finish at Monte Sirino. When he took the lead in stage two, Rominger had said that he didn’t plan to keep the lead. But as the race developed it was looking like Rominger had no plans to cede the maglia rosa and his Mapei team was put at the front of the race day after day.

A small break escaped on Monte Sirino and Laudelino Cubino was first while Rominger led in the field only 4 seconds behind the last of the fugitives. The day had two serious casualties, Berzin and Fondriest, who both lost time.

Stage ten, a 42-kilometer individual time trial on an undulating course finishing in Maddaloni, just north of Naples, was another opportunity for the World Hour Record holder to tighten his grip on the race. Rominger rode a new carbon-fiber time trial bike that had been delivered just the day before. Yet, the bike’s newness was no handicap: Rominger took 1 minute 24 seconds out of Berzin and Ugrumov, who finished within two-tenths of a second of each other. Rominger now had a 3-minute lead over Ugrumov and 3 minutes 8 seconds over third-place Berzin.

Tony Rominger time trialing

During the rest day that followed, the race transferred north to the coast of Tuscany. Stage eleven had a hilltop finish at Il Ciocco after a day of climbing in the Apuan Alps. On the road to Il Ciocco, Berzin tried to challenge Rominger, but the Swiss rider had no trouble marking the Russian. Ugrumov tried his hand and Rominger’s answer was to go to the front. Though Rominger didn’t look like he was going deep, only Berzin and Ugrumov were able to stay with him. They finished the stage together.

The Giro’s final chapter opened in Trent with stage fourteen, the year’s longest stage at 240 kilometers. There were four highly rated climbs with the finish atop the 2,004-meter high Val Senales in the Dolomites.

At over twenty kilometers, the Senales ascent was long enough for the Gewiss drama to really play out. With about eight kilometers to go, Rominger was with Berzin, Ugrumov and Spanish rider Oliviero Rincon while a group with Chiappucci was a short distance behind them.

Rincon scooted away and Ugrumov decided to lead the Rominger trio. Crystallizing the split within the team, Ugrumov then attacked, taking Rominger with him, leaving teammate Berzin behind. Rominger and Ugrumov formed a working duo that temporarily distanced itself from Berzin, but as the road flattened out, Berzin clawed his way back. The trio slackened their speed slightly allowing the Chiappucci group to close up. There were now only two kilometers to go and no one was able to catch Rincon. At no time during the stage was Rominger ever in distress; he easily matched the efforts of his two Gewiss challengers and that was quite enough.

Stage fifteen left Italy for Switzerland and a 185-kilometer day in the mountains ending with a climb to Lenzerheide/Valbella. Berzin wasn’t giving up. On the Flüele pass, the day’s penultimate ascent, Berzin attacked and bridged up to an earlier break. The stage was only about half over and Berzin had about a two-minute lead. Rominger didn’t seem too concerned, putting his Mapei men to work controlling the gap.

Berzin was caught before the start of the final climb. He and Ugrumov kept trying to get away but Rominger had such deep reserves he was able to answer each attack. And that’s how the stage ended with no change in the standings of the top three.

The year’s final time trial was not designed for the big-gear boys, featuring an ascent of the 760-meter-high Gallo before the climb to Selvino Aviatico. Again, Rominger was supreme. Ugrumov faltered a bit and lost 24 seconds to Berzin, ceding second place to his rival.

It wasn’t over as far as Ugrumov was concerned. Stage nineteen, going from Mondovì to Briançon in France offered no end of possibilities with its three major Alpine passes, the Sampeyre, the Agnello, and the Izoard.

Snowpack on the upper slopes of the Agnello from the previous day’s snowfall avalanched onto the road a few kilometers from the summit, trapping some of the race caravan travelling ahead of the race. As a result, it was decided to end the stage just part way up the Agnello in Ponte Chianale where an intermediate sprint had been planned.

Since the announcement of the shortened stage came with only about an hour’s worth of riding left in the now 130-kilometer stage, any plans for big moves on the final climb had to be forgotten. This might have been a gift to Rominger, who looked awful that day. No one was able to take advantage of his apparent giornata no.

The next day was another race in the Alps. Ugrumov went crazy trying to get away, but Berzin and Rincon stayed with him and no amount of attacking could drop them. They also refused to work with him to distance themselves from the Rominger group, being content to ride up to Ugrumov’s wheel after each of his accelerations. The distaste the two Gewiss riders had for each other was starkly evident, the duo bickering their way to the line while Rominger led his group to the finish without any evident panic, feeling comfortable with a few seconds’ time loss.

That evening the Gewiss director had a sit-down with his petulant racers, telling them that they should be attacking Rominger, not each other.
The second-to-last stage was not going to be easy with two ascents of the Cuvignone. It was another lousy day with the rain coming down in buckets. Berzin tried to escape on the second time up the Cuvignone, but had to surrender near the top. The descent was extremely technical and the riders were in no mood to take stupid chances on the slippery roads.

The final ascent of the day and the Giro was the 5.7-kilometer Salita di Montegrino Valtravaglia and Berzin used it to get away and stay away. He beat the Rominger group containing Ugrumov to the line by 25 seconds, thereby assuring himself of a secure second place.

Rominger’s Giro win was as commanding and effortless as any Grand Tour victory. No one at any point had the ability to put him in extremis. He seized the lead at the first possible opportunity, the stage two time trial, and kept it the rest of the race. He was the third Swiss victor in Giro history, Koblet having won in 1950 and Clerici in 1954.

On the final podium Rominger and Berzin looked quite pleased with things but Ugrumov looked dour, probably replaying the race in his head and wondering where he could have taken 42 seconds out of his Russian nemesis.

* * *
That fall Pantani crashed again, this time it was a horrific, potentially career-ending racing accident. Fine-tuning his form before the 1995 Tour of Lombardy, he crashed into a car that had been allowed on the course of the late-season Milan–Turin Classic. As he was descending into Turin at high speed with two other riders they smashed into a Nissan 4x4 going the opposite direction. Pantani suffered, among other serious injuries, several broken bones in his left leg.

After a protracted and difficult recovery regimen, he was able to resume riding in March of 1996. In April, he signed to race the 1997 season with Luciano Pezzi’s Mercatone Uno-sponsored team, which was to be built around him. Because this was a Pantani-centered squad, no sprinters were signed who might distract the team from its goal of delivering him to the finish first. By the end of 1996, still wearing his Carrera kit, Pantani was riding professional races in Spain. When Carrera pulled out of racing at the end of the year Mercatone Uno swept in and signed several more of the team’s riders to be Pantani’s gregari.